Charles S. Banks

1976

It may have been hot and windy that day, but I knew for a fact that Ray had burnt down the shed himself, and as much as I tried to tell Willie and Jo they wouldn’t believe me. Trying to get him thrown out the house, aren’t you, Jo said after I told her what happened. She was washing the marble counters in the kitchen with a sopping wet rag-- she sloshed it left and right, left and right. You feel like we’re replacing you, don’t you, Jo added while staring down at her reflection in the puddle on the counter. Meanwhile I’d stared at the floor, gaze following the grime in between the milk colored tiles. Ray had done strange and harmful things before, but this had to be the worst. Yet Jo still wasn’t mad with him, so I went out of the kitchen, through the living room with the deep red furniture set, down the narrow hallway with the yellow walls, out the screen door, down to the garden in the backyard where Willie was. He was planting flowers, and just like Jo he didn’t look up when I told him about Ray. 

Charles, you know he’d never do that, Willie chided. He tugged at a bush of dead roses, the thorns snagging on his gloves. I insisted that yes, Ray would do that, and he had done it. He’d burnt the shed down. But Willie just shook his head and rolled his eyes at me. Well, if you insist, we’ll go look. I guided him through the woods, the trees half alive with the green of spring, the wind whooshing around the trees. We went down the trampled little path, down the hill, on a log across the creek, and finally to the shed. It’s some miracle Ray didn’t manage to burn down the woods, too, I thought grimly as Willie looked at the deep gray smoke billowing up in the air, looked at the pile of soot and ash in a neat little box, almost like someone had gathered it all together. 

I’d known Willie for about five years at the time, and had been living with him and Jo for three of those years. One thing I got used to quickly was that you could never tell what he made of something. He would stare at you with big blank eyes, fire at you with ambiguous, vague comments.

“Well,” he said.

Well. Well, then.

“It is hot and windy, but I didn’t think it would be enough to cause any damage.”

But it wasn’t the heat and the wind. I told him that and he frowned.

“You mean to say, you really believe Ray did this?”

Of course he did. I nodded. 

“Well,” he said again. “I don’t think so. I really don’t.”

This had happened four times already: I would tell Willie and Jo about something Ray did, they wouldn’t believe me. And each time Willie said the same thing: I don’t think so, I really don’t. And Jo always looked down at what she was doing while she tried to pick out the psychological reasoning behind me telling her what Ray did, saying Oh it must be because you’re afraid of rejection, isn’t it or You seem to be doing this because you want to be acknowledged more or something stupid like that. The first time, Ray killed one of the chickens with his shotgun, just shot it right there in the coop. Then he took it out and tossed it around and shot it a few more times, and I came out and caught him by the time he had started plucking feathers from the chicken’s dead little body. When he saw me, he dropped it on the dry ground, sending up a tiny cloud of dust. He stood there, hands in his pockets. 

“Do you need something, Charley?” he said.

“It’s Charles, not Charley.”

“All the same, all the same. But can I help you with something, or…” I didn’t answer, just looked down at the chicken in the dirt, then back at him. 

“What happened to the chicken?” I asked. 

“I wouldn’t know. Came out here and it was dead in the dirt.” He’d been clever, I thought, and already put the shotgun away so there was no proof he killed the chicken. That was one of the reasons I couldn’t prove he killed this bird for no reason but his own pleasure I suppose, that and he took it out to the creek and let it get carried off by the water. He told Willie and Jo and me about it at dinner that day between mouthfuls of steamed little potatoes. 

“Found Loretta dead right out by the chicken coop today,” he began, still chewing on his potatoes. It always seemed as though Ray couldn’t put an ‘I’ at the front of his sentences, as if it was always something he thought of afterwards. To clarify, Loretta was the chicken: a small white hen with brown and black spots that looked so close to mud that we couldn’t tell whether there was dirt on her some of the time. When I saw her today, she had so much dirt and dried blood on her that she looked almost completely brown. “Put her out in the creek so she wouldn’t draw out them turkey vultures.”

Jo sighed. 

“That’s the third one dead this year, do you think we have coyotes coming up to the coop?” she said, looking at Willie. Willie scratched his bushy mustache, pointed on the ends, and looked at his now empty plate. I got the feeling that this was a good time to tell Jo and Willie what Ray did to the chicken. But how could I get them to believe me? Ray had dropped the chicken in the creek and put the shotgun right where it had been. They’re my friends, I thought, and Ray has only been here for eight months. They’ll believe me over him, won’t they?

“I wouldn’t know about it.”

“What do you think of it, Ray?” 

“Ah, doubt if I’ve told you before but I had loads of coyotes back where I came from. I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if it did turn out to be coyotes.” 

“That is what I’m thinking,” Jo said approvingly. She then looked at me, more out of politeness than an interest in what I had to say. 

“And Charles, what do you think?” Everyone turned to look at me. Ray stared at me with a dark expression from the other end of the varnished wooden table, and suddenly I wasn’t so eager to tell Willie and Jo about what he did. I thought of that shotgun, propped up against the wall out on the porch. I thought of Ray chasing me down in the woods, the shotgun clutched to his chest as he laughed gleefully and all the while Jo and Willie sitting back in their old wooden chairs on the porch. I became aware of the fact that Ray could hurt me, could kill me if he really wanted, and neither Jo nor Willie would be able to stop him. 

“Oh, I don’t know, you know I don’t have a clue about things like that.” Ray grinned at me with defined grayish teeth lined up in a wide smile. I think he was really relieved, and whether that was because he no longer had the need to hurt me or because I didn’t tell Jo and Willie about what he really did, I’m not sure. But they still had to know this man was lying to them, didn’t they? I went to Jo after dinner, who was brushing her tangled brown hair. I told her what he did. Told her not to tell him that I told her. Oh, I’m not sure about that. Ray is a good man, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Are you sure you weren’t seeing things? It was the middle of summer then, so if we saw something we couldn’t or didn’t want to explain, we blamed it on the heat. The heat is making me see things, we’d say, and go back inside for a glass of water. I told her it wasn’t the heat, she patted me on the back. Charles, you’re a good man too, I’m sure it was just the heat messing with your head. I gave up with her, and went to the parlor where Willie was reading some book-- Great Expectations, I think. I told him about Ray.

“Even if he did kill Loretta, I’m sure there was a reason. Maybe she was sick, or injured. I don’t know. But Ray wouldn’t do that for nothing,” Willie responded with a sigh. He turned a thin page. Flipped it back to the page he was on. Turned it again. After a few minutes of waiting for him to say something else, I left him, my footsteps creaking on the stairs. Ray was already in his room, and light leaked out from underneath the door. I passed it. My room was down the upstairs hallway, to the left-- it had been for the past three years. The radio was on in Ray’s room, playing some upbeat song I didn’t recognize. That night, as I lay in bed, I became aware of just how convincing Ray could act, and just how gullible Willie and Jo could be. I wondered what life would be like if I were as persuasive, as well-liked and thus always believed as he was. I thought about it all, and what it took for Ray to earn the favor of my friends. 

The second of Ray’s crimes was stealing from Jo’s purse. This, in my mind, was one of the unforgivable, and inexcusable, things that Ray did. We were provided for by a number of sources: the fruit orchard, the garden, the livestock, and for everything else, my rent payments. Ray didn’t pay rent like I did. He helped around the house and outside, but hadn’t paid to stay since the first night he spent at the house. He’d simply asked to stay the night while passing through one day, and eventually stopped paying rent, to which Willie and Jo had next to no objection; he was good company, anyway, and for sure helpful when you needed him to be. Yet he stole, took money right from the pocket of Jo’s green oval purse, and drove out to town in his rusty red Chevrolet Malibu. He came back with three animal traps, lined up in a row in his trunk. 

“Where’d you get those at,” Willie said, hands on his hips as he watched Ray unload the traps from his trunk. Ray laughed. 

“Had some leftover money from a while back, decided to buy some animal traps.”

“Huh.” He took the traps down the path, out to the woods. Willie and I watched him until we couldn’t see him any more. Willie shook his head and half-smiled.

“What a character,” he said. I was starting to get angry with Willie and Jo that day, and didn’t try to explain to them how Jo had inexplicably lost some money from her purse the same time Ray had inexplicably come up with sixty dollars. Truthfully, I never really knew how he got away with all he did. Once again I laid in bed and thought about it, and after a while I began to imagine myself instead of Ray, taking from purses and doing whatever I like while still being admired and loved. I imagined Ray in my place, trying again and again to explain to Willie and Jo how I was messing with their house, messing with their things. I wondered what it would be like to have power over others.

The third thing that Ray did was shoot at me. I was down in the woods, checking by the roots of the trees for the mushrooms of the fall season. I bent down under a pine, saw nothing, another pine, nothing, but under the third pine I found a little patch of oyster mushrooms. As I stooped under the pine, I heard rustling in the distance. I didn’t think anything of it, I only pinched the stem of a mushroom and plucked it from the ground. I put it in the paper bag setting next to me, and suddenly something flew past my ear, hitting the tree trunk in front of me. I stood up and turned around-- Ray crouched a little further up on the hill that lead to the house, aiming the shotgun at me. I didn’t think why, I didn’t think to reason with Ray or convince him not to shoot me. I felt like an animal, I felt helpless. And yet there was a thrill taking hold of me as I ran, feet pounding on the grass, down to the creek, across the log that had fallen over it, through the mud and finally, once I’d drawn Ray from his place on the hill, up to the house. My heart was pounding. I could hardly breathe at all, and couldn’t get enough air no matter how hard I tried to. 

I ran through the house, shouting for Willie, or Jo. There was nothing. No one. They must have left, I thought bitterly, frantically. They didn’t leave often; Ray must have been waiting for them to be out to do this. I looked out the window: Ray was coming up to the house, slow and collected. Up the stairs I went, into Jo and Willie’s room, and then into their bathroom. I would have shut and locked other doors to throw Ray off and make him think I was hiding somewhere else, but there was no time. All I could do was lie in the bathtub with the curtain shut, curled into fetal position. I listened to Ray’s steady footsteps-- up the stairs and down the hallway. Creak, creak. Pause. Creak, creak. The door to Jo and Willie’s bedroom slowly opened, making a shrill noise. I held my hands over my mouth and bit my palm. This was it. I would die here. I would be shot to death. I would never know love, never grow a family of my own. In a few moments it would all be over. It was over. 

I heard the sound of the front door swinging open, the sound of Willie’s voice and Jo’s laughter. Ray cursed quietly and walked away. A few minutes passed before I climbed out of the bathtub, heart feeling as though it would fall from my chest. I looked around, and since I could not see Ray anywhere nearby, bolted downstairs. 

“Oh, hi there, Charles,” Jo said as she rummaged through a bag on the dining table. Willie stood over the stovetop, putting something into a frying pan. My heart was still beating fast and I could barely keep myself from gasping for air. I still didn’t see Ray-- maybe he’d gone into his room. I shut my eyes for a while, biting the inside of my cheek hard. When I opened my eyes Jo was looking at me with concern. 

“Are you alright?” she asked gently. I looked around; Ray was coming down the stairs. I’d have to tell them later, so for the moment I gave her a brisk nod. She ran a hand through her thin brown hair as Ray walked over to the table. 

“There you are,” he said. “Been looking for you all.”

“You have? Willie and I went to town for some groceries.”

“I see. Where were you, Charles?” Ray said. Where was I? I wanted to swear at him. No, I wanted to strangle him. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I had only hurt someone on purpose once before, and that was a long time ago, before I moved out of my family’s house and came here with Willie and Jo. I don’t want to recall it. That night, I went into the living room again, where Willie was reading another book, The Great Gatsby. I was curious as I hadn’t heard of it before, and Willie looked up at me when he noticed I was staring at his book. He angled it so I could see the cover more clearly.

“Have you read this?” he asked. I had not; I shook my head. 

“It’s good, I like it. It’s about power: these rich people feel powerful, so they think they can do whatever they want. Their mindset of power leads them to bad decisions.” This he said more to himself than to me, which I could tell by the way he stared at the pages of his book. Huh. Power creates destruction. I hadn’t thought about that, but it made enough sense. 

“You always were smart with books,” I responded. Willie laughed, tilting his head. He’d gone to college for a while to study literature, I remembered him telling me, until he’d met Jo and the two decided to go live together at the farmhouse. I sat down in the armchair next to his. We talked for a little while, about small things: how the tomatoes in the garden were doing, Jo’s new painting hobby, and the sizes of fish we’d caught that summer. But I am sure it was clear there was something else on my mind, as once I trailed off from our conversation, Willie gave me a strange look. I figured I might as well say what I’d been meaning to say in the first place.

“I need to talk to you about something,” I said. I thought of Ray, creaking around the house as I hid in the bathtub. Willie set the book face-down on his leg. 

“Ray tried to shoot me today. He chased me in the woods, and then around the house. If you hadn’t gotten back when you did, I think I’d be dead,” I told him with a shaky voice. I could have died that day and Willie and Jo wouldn’t even know it. Just like the chicken Ray killed, discarded into the creek without a single concern, a single ounce of sympathy. Willie straightened in his seat.

“What? He did? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I had to hide in your bathtub while he slunk around looking for me.” I paused. “I could have died, Willie. He would have killed me.” He was silent, and had a despondent look to him. He stood up, tucking The Great Gatsby under his arm. I looked at him, and he returned my gaze with a meaningful look. He reached over and patted me on the shoulder. 

“Listen, Charles. I’ll talk to him, to try to sort this out. But I’m truly sorry this happened to you,” he said to me. I shut my eyes, and he walked out of the room. I was alone, then, staring at the velvety red armchair and the eggshell-white curtains on the window behind it. I had to leave this house. I had to pack up my things and move far, far away, someplace where I wouldn’t be hunted every moment of the day. Someplace where I was unconditionally safe, not only when everyone was home. Yes, I thought decisively, I had to leave. But what would happen to Willie and Jo? Would Ray turn on them once his initial prey had escaped him? I sighed. Somehow, I had to leave, and I had to take Ray with me. Or at least make sure he wouldn’t do anything. 

That night I took the shotgun. It was sitting in its usual place, propped up against the front of the house. I took it down the hill, along the path, and dropped it into the creek. Just like Ray did to the dead chicken. Just like he would have done to me. I watched it bob in the water, turning over to one side and then the other as it drifted away. When I got back in the house, I waited in the dark until Ray left his room. I would have killed him that night, but first I wanted to make sure he was defenseless. Powerless. Once Ray shut the door to the bathroom down the hall, I hurried into his room. Quick, I thought, where would he keep weapons? I looked in the closet, behind hung-up clothes and items on the floor, and there was nothing. I looked in his nightstand’s drawers, still nothing. I paused for a moment when I heard the toilet flush down the hall, and then it occurred to me: under the bed. Frantically, I looked under the bed. In front of me was a pistol, a rifle, and some kind of blade. The door to the bathroom opened, and I almost collapsed with fear. Ray had nearly killed me while I was minding my own business-- what would he do when he found me rummaging around in his room? The weight of the situation came over me; I felt like throwing up, or passing out, or both. Footsteps echoed from the hallway, and left without any other option, I climbed under Ray’s bed.

He walked into his room, and stopped in the doorway. Here I was again, hiding from a man who was not only willing but fully capable of killing me. I had my mouth covered with both hands, and resisted the urge to scream hysterically. Ray would more than likely stab or shoot me if I did that, but at least Willie and Jo would know I was in trouble, wouldn’t they? Maybe not, a part of me suddenly added. Ray had a way of manipulating situations and what people thought about them; he might pass off the screaming as him seeing a mouse in the bathroom, or being startled by something. So I had no choice but to stay as silent as possible. Ray sat on the bed, muttering something to himself before settling down under the covers. I waited for what felt like hours. Finally, he started to snore-- quietly, but it was a better indicator of him being asleep than no sound at all. Slowly, deliberately, I crawled out from under his bed, the rifle and pistol tucked under my arm and the blade in my pocket. I didn’t get up onto my feet-- that would make too much noise. But I did turn around for a brief moment, to stare at Ray, asleep in his bed. I could kill him now. I’d kill him and it would be done with. I didn’t kill him that night. Something about shooting a man dead while he was simply laying there, asleep, didn’t seem alright to me, although perhaps I should have shot him that night anyway. Instead, I crept back to my room and locked the door. Who knows whether Ray would have felt it necessary to come in and shoot me in my sleep-- or rather, since I had taken all of his weapons, strangle me. I stowed the rifle and pistol underneath my bed, and climbed under my own covers, the blade still in my pocket. 

I didn’t sleep at all that night, only laid there, listening for the sound of Ray’s footsteps in the hall, for the sound of my door opening. There was nothing. I barely heard anything, just the sound of a mouse scurrying around in the rafters above the ceiling or a bird flying by the window clumsily. Yet, each of those noises scared me, raising my heartbeat to the point where it felt as though my body would collapse in on itself. Morning arrived. It was agonizingly slow, but nonetheless it arrived. 

The door to my room swung open. Just as I had been fearing all night, it was Ray who had opened the door, staring at me hatefully and yet pitifully, as if something bad was about to happen to me. I shot up in my bed. 

“Yes?” I asked, my eyes drifting to the stairs in the hopes that Willie, or Jo, or anyone at all would come up and lay eyes on this scene, and make sure Ray didn’t do anything. I was afraid, yes. The fear will end today, I thought. 

“Jo made breakfast,” he answered, turning around in a defeated way, as if he wanted to attack me right then and there but something was stopping him. He made his way down the stairs. A few minutes later, I did the same. Plates with scrambled eggs and a chunk of bread sat on the table, a napkin and fork next to them. Jo and Willie were already sitting in the spots they normally sat, and Ray was pouring himself a glass of milk. I sat in my spot, and once Ray had taken his seat, we all looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Jo began to speak. 

“Charles, Ray,” she began. “Recently, it seems as though you two…” She hesitated, and squinted at the table while she sought after the right words. “...haven’t been getting along.” Ray huffed quietly in a sort of mock confusion. I, on the other hand, nodded knowingly. I supposed Willie must have told her what I said the night before. About what Ray tried to do. 

“I was wondering if there was any way we can resolve it?”

“I don’t think there’s anything going on between us. Is there, Charles?”

“Ah…” I felt Ray’s eyes on me again, and was once again unsure what to say. 

“We usually get along with one another just fine. I mean, we have our disagreements, but nothing big, which I’d say is normal.”

Ray, who seemed to grow tenser by the second, relaxed after I said this. I exhaled quietly, relieved that I hadn’t provoked any reactions. That seemed to put Jo at ease, but Willie, on the contrary, looked at me skeptically. His expression seemed to say, I know you’re lying, but for everyone’s sake I won’t call you out on it. That was good. At least I had someone who understood my situation.

After breakfast, I helped Jo with the dishes and then went outside to fish. I enjoyed fishing: it was something I could do to clear my mind, to get away from people and social interactions. But it was also an escape from my worries and everyday thoughts, because while I was so focused on catching fish, I hardly thought about anything else. It was a way to be fully engrossed, fully engaged and almost enamored with something that wouldn’t matter once I stepped away from it-- and yet, it was hard that day to not let my mind drift back to my worries as I stood ankle-deep in a brown-tinted current. My jeans were rolled halfway up my calves, and I had a sharpened metal stick to stab at the fish. I preferred this type of fishing to using bait on a hook and pulling the fish up on a string-- one, it was easier to immediately kill the fish, and two, it was more mentally occupying. Today seems to be the exception for that, I thought, frustrated. I’d have to keep myself occupied and out of Ray’s path until later on, closer to dark. Then I would do what needed to be done. Only halfway paying attention to what I was doing, I stabbed at the water. I lifted the stick; blood seeped and drifted away with the current, and a big fish impaled by the stick was using the last of its life to squirm around helplessly. 

The fish was big enough for the four of us, but I supposed there would only be three of us soon. If everything went as planned, that is. I put the fish in my basket, along with a few others I had caught prior to it, and made my way back up to the house. Before I started up the hill, I looked behind me again, at the twinkling creek embedded with a shade of brown that was elegant rather than earthly, although perhaps those two were one and the same, and the intricate tangle of branches hanging over the water, just above the soil and pebbles of the bank. I wondered, briefly, if beauty could be found in a place other than this. Then I turned away from it. Went back up the hill. The fish in the basket hanging from my arm. 

Ray was waiting for me at the top of the hill, and a sense of dread took over me. Despite taking his weapons from him, despite Willie and Jo being nearby, despite all I had done to protect myself against him, I felt utterly powerless. Nothing that I did would be enough to keep me safe. And somehow, by some force of cowardice or sympathy or both, I could not bring myself to kill Ray. Standing before him on the hill, his blade in my pocket, I was still incapable of doing what was necessary. I walked past him, back into the house. And by doing such, I allowed Ray to commit the fourth of his transgressions: burning the shed.

The shed was not something we often used, neither Jo nor Willie nor me, but there were some supplies and utensils in it, such as rakes, a few tarps, and other assorted items, that were worth keeping. Ray must have taken the barn’s near emptiness as a reason to rid us of it, because when I went down to the creek on that hot and dry day, like I said, it was burnt, the ashes and darkened wood in a neat little pile. 

Willie and Jo, in the few days that passed before Ray burnt the shed, had grown back into their usual pattern of not listening to what I told them and letting Ray do whatever he pleased. As their disinterest grew, so did my irritation. That’s why I finally snapped at Ray after I’d taken Willie to the shed, and after he’d dismissed it as not so important, we hardly use that shed anyway even though Ray had no reason at all to burn it down in the first place, whether we used it or not. That is the only reason I managed to do what I planned to do: pure, unrelenting anger. 

I didn’t feel pity as I chased Ray across the bean field-- that is, I didn’t feel pity for Ray, only a small amount for the bean plants I was trampling. Instead, I felt a thrill. It was a different thrill than the one of I felt being chased. It was bigger. Colder. It took over me, and before I knew it I was running faster than I knew I could run, while Ray stumbled over himself trying to get away from me. I suppose he preferred to be the one chasing, rather than the one being chased, based on the way he was out of breath and sobbing as he ran in big, rabbit-like strides. Once we crossed the field he darted into the woods, and just as he had done to me, I followed. 

Some part of me was beginning to understand why Ray did what he did; some part, since that day, began to seek out the thrills of going against what nature and society intend, of relieving impulses regardless of the harm they might cause. The rest of me knew this was not a good thing. The rest of me tried to keep this down. But perhaps it was Freud who talked about the id, and the ego, and I believe that although he was wrong about a lot of things he was right about one: the impulses will always reach out, trying to break the surface and to seep into one’s life, slowly taking over like a parasite. The superego can only stop it for so long, until the impulses run like veins underneath every thing one does, and until the id is the ruler of the mind and the body. That is how I felt when I had pinned Ray under my foot, near the fence at the end of Willie and Jo’s property. He squirmed in the overgrowth of dry grass, tears streaming down his face and snot bubbling in his throat as he cried out. 

This is what helplessness looks like, I thought in a cold tone that made me feel as if I were not myself. Although, I guess I hardly was myself-- I hadn’t done anything like this before, nor had I even thought to. 

“Please, please,” Ray managed to croak out through his gargling of mucus and tears. I was broken from my strange, impulsive daze, and was now faced with a mildly repulsive man gaping up at me. I tilted my head. Ray had been so collected, so emotionless as he came after me. Now, he was a sniveling mess with the bugs from the grass skittering over his body while he begged for mercy. What had changed him so wholly, so quickly? It was power, I thought. I knew it then and I know it now. Power is the ruling factor in everything and everyone. Power creates destruction, that’s what Willie said. No, I realized that day. It’s the other way around. 

Destruction creates power.